Variant Strain

- - -

Peter wasn't sure what he was expecting when he stepped through the doors.

Certainly not what he found.

The smells hit him first. Opening the doors stirred the air and sent threads and whispers of scent towards him. The oldest scent and most broadly placed was the musty, closed-in carrion scent that Peter had associated with Hank's body. Something like jerky left in a closed in room decades too long. Desiccated meat.

It had been prevalent when he'd followed Jessica through the labyrinthine tunnels, but here, it was strong enough to be exceptionally distracting and familiar.

Threading through it, with moving sources shifting constantly through the scentscape of Hank's corpse was Jessica's scent. Something akin to waffles, but not quite. Creamy and rich and somehow managing to partake of the character of the distinctive Hydra carrion scent, while at the same time being absolutely nothing like it. Her scent was strong. Almost overwhelmingly strong. She was close by. Peter could practically taste her.

Then the last part that he could only just barely catch. Something... off. The bitter, acrid ozone tang of Oscorp's Hydra that seemed to fade in and out of senses in time with his heartbeat.

The double doors led to a short hall, where the raw red meat color of the viral matting changed subtly as he walked deeper. The reds and rust of the material had another thin layer over it. A thin, shiny membrane that reminded him vaguely of fresh scar tissue. The not-quite yet entirely healed flesh beneath an over-picked scab. The covering seemed to get thicker as he went deeper. Looking more and more like actual skin over the viral matting, but it was taut and seemed ill-fitting somehow on the faintly pulsing living material.

There were sprawling strings and nodes of the covered viral matting, but more of the bare wall beneath was also exposed. It wasn't bare stone or the flat, institutional white and green that the rest of the interior halls had sported. The walls here that showed through was a sort of old fashioned red brickwork.

Like a subway station, Connors murmured suddenly.

The hallway opened up into an larger area and Peter found himself at the top of a set of stairs leading downwards to a platform next to metal tracks.

A memory rose up unbidden-- a long slow ride on clattering tracks , sliced to pieces, boxed up and shipped like so much cargo. Blind, half-mad and almost insensate across half the country--

An abandoned subway station, Peter thought wonderingly. He supposed that this would explain why Gentek tower was built where it had been. This was how they had gotten Hank Pym into New York and situated within Manhattan.

The area around him was lit by a mixture of glowing threads of thin, red light from the expansive patches of fleshy viral matting and the blindingly intense yellow-white of spot-lights that very obviously only been recently installed. Those lights had been scattered haphazardly, almost as though any sufficiently bare spot that had been freed of viral matting had become fair game for the placement.

In the odd mix of sharply shadowed white and the gentler indirect red lights, Peter could see that there was an extremely high ceiling, at least forty feet from the platform. Even higher over the tracks. Perhaps that had been intended to counteract the claustrophobic feel of being underground. Perhaps that might have even worked when the place had been new, but besides the schizophrenic lighting throwing crazed shadowy patterns all across the area, the ceiling now sported multiple gaping holes in the brickwork. They were unevenly shaped, each easily a yard or more across and filled with an immense cable of blood-red and rust-brown flesh stretching in a taut line downwards towards a closed off area that looked like what had been left of the station master's offices to the right.

That part of the area was still deeply padded with old viral matting and sported a plethora of broken electronics piled up near the open doors to those offices.

Sweeping his gaze to the left, more of the old brick work and walls showed as the viral matting there had been meticulously scraped away by something that had left a lot of long, shallow scratches in the stone and brick. All around him, drones milled about. Carrying armfuls of the fleshy material down to the subway cars that had been carefully arrayed on the tracks.

Peter frowned as he focused his eyes on the end of the tracks. Where the tracks should have continued was an immense plug of calcified flesh. It blocked the tracks, but there was a gaping hole near the center of the plug, creating an opening for a single set of tracks, large enough for a subway car to get through. More drones moved purposefully out of the hole, bearing loads of bone-embedded viral matting that they deposited elsewhere, just out of his range of vision.

He turned his attention from the excavation to the subway cars and licked his lips nervously as he realized they'd been put on the tracks with purpose.

All of the subway cars had their windows shattered and the doors torn free to better fill each and every car to overflowing with taut, pallid flesh. It bulged obscenely out of the subway cars , pale and taut and shiny with faint red lights flickering just beneath the surface. In a few windows and doors were black pits. Those were the cavernous chambers of mobile hives, split wide open. The oversized moon-faces, with their blank staring eyes and the tiny, spindly arms on either side of the gaping bifurcated jaws and immense unzipped guts twitched feebly.

They weren't confined to a single such creature in each car, but there were anywhere from two to six of them protruding from the openings, the uniformity of their bodies making it impossible to tell where one ended and where another began.

Drones made processions from where they were scraping clear the viral matting to shovel their loads-- more of Hank's corpse flesh-- into those gaping maws, a faint red glow flickering brighter with every fresh delivery.

Even from this distance Peter could uncomfortably feel something like the faint tingle of red aura interacting with a Vulture's.

Mass shifted. Shifting?

He almost didn't want to speculate just how much actual biomass each of those mobile hives had. Definitely more than should be possible if one were just calculating from density and the volume of the subway cars.

Tons. Plural. Even before the mass shifts.

In front of each car were multiple loops of chain that had been threaded haphazardly into its structure. Some went through windows, or railings, but in some cases it looked as though the chain had simply been punched through the car's chassis. In every case, the chains seeming to simply disappear into the flesh of the mobile hives within, leaving puckered, barely scabbed-over wounds where the chains emerged from its body. Peter could even see on a few that the flesh seemed to have been swollen with infection where the chain was attached.

The chains were in turn attached to immense, crouched forms on the tracks. At first, Peter couldn't quite make them out, but once he caught the outlines of shoulders and hints of profile, he realized what they were.

Rhinos. Cain gaped. The mobile hives are chained up to Rhinos.

The loops of chain seemed to be embedded in their flesh as well, creating a secondary layer of armor. Rather than looking like badly done piercings as they did on the hive end, it looked as though their hardened, corpse-pallor gray hide had been allowed to grow around the chains, making it part of the structure.

These Rhinos seemed even larger than any that he'd seen before, one and a half times the normal size. Wide enough to take up the entire track on their own and Peter estimated that had they been standing, they would have been taller than the subway cars.

He could hear them where they crouched. Twenty seven sets of immense lungs, taking rasping breaths in perfect time with one another. None of them moved save for the rising and falling of immense torsos, but Peter could see the drones swarming all around them and knew that once the tunnel was cleared...

Once this subway station was connected back to the regular lines, he knew those massive creatures would thunder down the tracks bearing their cargo.

His throat was dry and an involuntary shiver ran up his spine as another memory presented itself for inspection. This chamber had been almost filled with Hank's flesh just a few days ago. The drones had been very busy at their work.

A cubic yard of human flesh was around three quarters of a ton.

Peter's took in the size of the chamber and shook his head as the calculations ran through his mind.

That was tens of thousands of tons of viral matter. Hundreds of thousands, if he included all the other flesh that had been meticulously scraped away from other chambers.

All of it packed up nice and neat and tight into those subway cars.

Ready for delivery to nearly anywhere in New York, not just Manhattan.

Well, except for Staten Island, his voice quipped in a drawl, Although their real estate prices are going to really bottom out when all their neighbors are Hydra mutants.

I would like to point out, Cletus said carefully, That I think this is one of those moments when my usual suggestion of "kill 'em and eat 'em all" is gonna be real apropos.

I think we'd choke if we tried to cram all that down, Cain murmured back.

That's why we pace ourselves. Slow and methodical like.

He'd already started to move towards the crowded, busy tracks, when the half-ghostly Jessica stepped into his field of view. This close to her, she seemed practically real. No longer a half-seen wraith, but seemingly a real person, albeit one that was slightly transparent.

He finally got a clear look at the ghost Jessica he'd been following and blinked in surprise. She didn't look at all as she did when he'd last seen her physically. A statuesque brunette, sweetly and lushly curved. Long black hair a banner around her and wearing nothing but a thin hospital sheet as a makeshift toga. She didn't look at that at all.

She still had her striking, perfectly even feminine features, but her face was much younger. Her real face had a timeless beauty to it that made her look at least eighteen, but the hallucination before him-- and we're sure she's got to be hallucinatory-- looked barely fourteen.

Instead of the cascade of black hair, hers was styled into a sensible, if slightly old-fashioned bob. She was dressed in a short-sleeved, well-pressed white blouse and a maroon pencil skirt that came past her knees. Below that, ankle socks and shiny, black maryjanes.

All sensible perfectly and conservative and perfect for a girl from the late fifties or early sixties.

The unbidden thought came that she looked like she was waiting for someone to ask her to a sock hop.

She grabbed his hand once more and he could definitely feel the warmth and pressure of her hand in his.

"I thought you were coming to visit me," She said, smiling warmly. "Let them finish up, we can join them later when they're ready to go."

Her happy tone and the casual dismissal of the preparations to flood new York with infected chilled him. Not even the worst case scenarios Hank Pym had developed for Jessica's release allowed for the possibility of multiple hives being established in every part of the city simultaneously. Pym had never even conceived of the relatively tiny mobile hives.

She could sense his reluctance and tugged at his hand once more, this time fingers interlacing with his.

Her hand felt small and soft in his.

It fit perfectly.

It's a nonexistent hand, Donna chided. That's not real. She's not just some girl. Keep focused.

Jessica moved forcing him to follow her. She laughed and chattered on. He couldn't quite make out what she was saying now, as he caught sight of the changes below them.

In her wake, the scene seemed to waver and shift. Like observing something through a heat-haze or one of those magic eye illusions. One moment he was looking at the ruined old subway station, with its crowd of Hydra infected and their preparations. Seen through her body, it all looked far different.

The subway station was some sort of school gymnasium. The milling drones were suddenly just a few smiling teenagers in Letterman jackets, carrying picnic baskets. The subway cars had somehow consolidated into a single old-fashioned yellow school bus that was in the process of being loaded with laughing, smiling teenagers.

Just getting ready for a day's outing in New York. Picnic lunches at the ready. His voice drawled sarcastically at the sight.

The Rhinos now all seemed to be the same fellow, all a single beefy quarterback type with no neck that reminded Peter of the jocks that had once tormented him at school. That seemed so distant now, but the scene was just suddenly so... normal.

That's how she sees it, He realized. Does she even know what's actually happening?

Phooie, Cletus snorted, If it were just the one school bus, this'd be a lot easier.

Jessica continued to talk excitedly as she drew him towards the offices. As they stepped past the ruined electronics that shifted in his sight, wavering back and forth between its true appearance and that of old office equipment.

Peter? Are you paying attention? Jessica asked, blinking wide eyes at him. She only grew progressively more 'real' as they drew closerto the source of her scent. Her physical body was very close now.

Almost close enough to reach.

Close enough to touch.

Close enough to kill.

He wasn't sure who'd said or thought that.

Through the doors leading into the offices, away from the open area of the platform and the tracks, there was only a single set of the spotlights in the room, only just barely within the door. It was inadequate to light the whole place and only the reddish glow deeper within the chamber gave a clue to what he was looking at.

"Uh... yes," Peter replied awkwardly. "Yes, I'm paying attention to you."

The place was familiar. He was certain. He recognized it now, even in the half-light. The monitors were gone, but Hank's scent lingered persistently beneath Jessica's far stronger scent that seemed poised to wipe it away.

Henry's former central neural cluster. Connors said distantly, voice even more toneless than usual.

The viral matting still clung from the walls, but only barely. It seemed gray and lifeless and Peter wondered why it hadn't been peeled off and fed to the waiting school bus-- train cars-- below. He did notice that what there remained of it, was covered by that thin pinkish sheen.

Fresh viral matting seemed to have spawned in disorganized piles around the room. If Peter squinted and tilted his head, he could almost imagine the original shape those piles had taken. Sleepers. Fresh ones to shore up the peeling flesh.

In the vaguely better light he now had, Peter realized that what he'd taken for bare stone during his first trip here, had actually been concrete that had a cracked veneer of brickwork tile laid over it that had crumbled over the years beneath the fleshy covering. One wall still sported the hole Shield Team had blasted open to get to them.

On the wall opposite that, the doors of the elevator shaft he'd escaped from were still open, but rubble and debris had choked the shaft itself shut, most likely from when the building above had collapsed.

So much for an easy exit, Cain grumbled.

In the center of the room, where the column of flesh that had been the focal point for Pym's neural architecture, all that was left was an elevated platform of lumpy and graying viral material. It was being shored up by the thin pink skin, as well as surrounded by fresher quantities of viral material.

In the center of the raised platform was something that might have been a Syetsevich at one time. Peter suspected it was the modified Rhino that Jessica had been riding from their last encounter.

The previous Rhino-form was half-melted into the platform, the dead gray of Pym's old flesh merged into the corpse-gray of the Rhino's hide. It was sort of on all fours, its arms had been folded in on themselves and the legs bent at strange angles. Where there had once been a raised pauldron that had acted as a saddle and throne for Jessica, it had now extended practically half-way down its back and the material had changed, no longer just a hard ridge of hide and bone. Its broad back had been transformed into a sort of divan where Jessica's body lay, once more seemingly asleep.

She was as Peter remembered her. Overwhelmingly, achingly beautiful. The sheet still draped artlessly over her reclined body, her dark hair a fan across her creamy white shoulders. Her feet were no longer merged with the Rhino, but folded under her gracefully.

The dim lighting and the angle hid just enough of her to maintain her modesty, but also showed just enough to make Peter quite bluntly aware that she wasn't wearing anything but the sheet.

The persistent, delicious scent of her making that awareness all the keener. Like tiny fingers racing up and down his spine.

He turned his attention entirely back to the hallucinatory Jessica who still held his hand. Cute, rather than gorgeous. Young. Vulnerable.

Looking at the illusion of the girl, seemed to blur the rest of the room into something else. The half-lit flesh encrusted underground office space seemed to defocus and suddenly he was looking at a girl's bedroom.

The taut and shiny pink sheen on the remaining flesh seemed to be pink floral-pattern wallpaper. Where the melted Rhino and the real Jessica lay was instead an unoccupied metal hospital bed with gray and white sheets. A slight, fresh breeze was coming into the room from a window where the hole in the wall was, causing sheer, pale pink curtains to flutter.

The details of the room seemed to melt away under close scrutiny into the reality, but on just a casual sweep of the eyes it just seemed so very perfectly normal.

He ran his tongue across suddenly dry lips as he forced himself to pay attention to where she actually lay, ignoring the hallucinatory Jessica that even now was holding his hand in hers.

Connors replied, his voice seeming to meld with Pym's smooth baritone, Jonathan Drew was trying to save his daughter as best he could, but he didn't understand how Hydra worked. Or at least, not enough. His Gamma strain of Hydra rebuilt her, made her seemingly healthy. Strong. But he wasn't satisfied with that. He wanted to give her back what had been taken from her.

Memory unfolded, unbidden.

-- he saw Jessica as she'd been before. Skeletal. Hollow cheeked. Her short brush of black hair fallen out in patches and her head barely covered with a kerchief. She was practically swimming in her pajamas. Too loose for her emaciated form and too long because they'd been bought anticipating that she'd have grown more. There was barely any flesh to her. Her skin was pale and waxy. Her eyes didn't seem to focus. At her bedside, Bruce Banner murmured softly to the girl. Comfortingly. He held her hand--

Her daddy wanted her pretty again. He wanted her to be able to make friends, The baritone took on a mocking edge to it. Worked a little too well. She's got a lot of friends now, doesn't she?

He glanced over his shoulder at the horde at her command. The army just waiting to be unleashed. He prayed he managed to deal with this one better than he had in Queens.

Why aren't we killing her yet? His own voice drawled at him.

She was pouting at him again, her arms crossed beneath her chest. A more modest bosom than the one her real body sported-- not that we're paying attention.

"You're not paying attention." She said and her real voice spoke the words in time with the hallucinatory one, an odd echo, the sultry tone mingled with childishness.

Peter's gaze swung from the real Jessica to the hallucinatory one and back. He had to wonder, Did she even know?

"Typical man," She sniffed, following his gaze to, what was to her eyes, her bed. "A lady invites you to visit and that's what you immediately think is going to happen." Her tone was still warm, but teasing now. Flirty.

Despite himself, he blushed then exclaimed, "Wait... what? No! That's not what I was thinking at all!"

"I'll have you know, I'm not that kind of girl." She grinned then. "That said, let me take your coat. You must be sweltering."

He blurted out, "So you do want my clothes off!"

Cletus sighed, You really need to let me handle talking to the ladies, sport. You suck at it.

She laughed and reached out for him, helping him to shrug out of what he realized seemed to be some sort of varsity Letterman jacket.

Peter knew he was still in the appearance Oscorp security uniform, which didn't leave any of him exposed to the air, but he realized belatedly that just as she wasn't seeing the room as it was, nor the platform outside, she most definitely wasn't seeing him as he currently appeared.

He looked back into her eyes and caught his reflection in them of him as... himself. His own self-image was what she was seeing. Just as he was seeing her self-image in this younger version of herself.

Cain gasped suddenly at that.

What's wrong? Peter asked worriedly as the dreamlike, but now seemingly very real Jessica moved to a coat rack to hang the jacket, which he guessed had to be something she saw in him? He wasn't sure what it was for.

She was humming a tune that he almost recognized as she did it.

She's... doing something. Cain replied uncertainly.

Gotta be more specific than that, Cletus prodded.

I don't know. The scents changed. She's closer. Somehow. More... here? I can't... No words exactly. Cain seemed to struggle, before continuing, his voice seeming to shift to a higher register, an unfamiliar woman's voice echoing with his in Peter's mind, She's maz droko. We are/am. We are wazin.

Cain, you need to focus, Donna murmured. Dammit... we're losing him.

Jessica, or at least the younger, hallucinatory version of her continued to flit idly around the room, straightening up as she continued to hum.

It was familiar to him.

-- so familiar a gleam--

Not just the tune, but the room.

A room he'd never been in before and didn't exist outside of a shared hallucination.

Hank Pym's memories presented the room as having been real... but Jessica had last been in it when she'd been ten. The house the room had been in had burned when Middleton had died.

But he knew this room. He was intimately familiar with it.

-- I know you--

Cain's mutterings in the alien language seemed to blend in with the song Jessica hummed.

He's in charge of our enhanced senses. Peter thought worriedly. She is doing something, he knew, but he couldn't tell what she was actually doing, if anything other than the song, which was familiar.

Peter frowned, forcing himself to see past the girl's bedroom back to the reality of Jessica's sleeping form. What was she doing asleep again? Or was she asleep. She seemed to be actively aware, in a warped fashion, of the preparations just outside the room.

Did she need to devote her concentration to that, so her body couldn't stay conscious? Wasn't that what his mother had done to keep her unconscious? Keep her mind occupied somehow?

-- I know what you'll do--

Then why waste thought processes on... the elaborate simulation. Or on flirting with him? His attention wavered back to the unreal Jessica who seemed to be staring out her window, continuing to hum the same melody.

--the way you did once--

"It'll be nice to be outside again," She said brightly to him, stopping the song suddenly. "To feel the sunshine. It feels like it's been so very long."

"I'll bet." Peter replied carefully. "That's... that's not going to happen, though."

"What do you mean?" She looked at him, her perfect brow creasing into a tiny frown.

"You can't go out." Peter continued slowly. "The picnic party out there? They can't leave either."

She humphed, "Just like your mother. Don't do this. Don't do that. I'll do what I want."

"I'll stop you." He said, with far more conviction than he actually felt.

Why are you talking to her? I thought we were here to kill her? Cletus grumbled.

We're supposed to deal with her, Peter thought back. Right now, I don't really like the odds if we're going to have to stop that entire horde out there by ourselves.

"Don't be silly, Peter," She replied with a faintly mocking tone. "We've been planning that for the longest time. Of course, we're going. You're coming with us. I'm inviting you."

Cain's mental voice was continuing to speak in the language that Peter could only just barely understand, but he was speaking in rhythm. In tune to a beat.

"Inviting--?" Peter sputtered.

"Mm-hmm," She said with a self-satisfied grin, "You and I are going to be great friends Peter. You can show me how to make more friends. Better friends." She clapped excitedly, "This will be the best outing ever."

She wants us to show her how to build better infected, Donna grumbled testily.

Connors, his voice still taking hints of Pym's, murmured back We do have scads of information on how to shape infected bodies.

Shouldn't she already know this?! He thought back. We got that info from a mobile Hive she built!

She didn't seem to register his protests at all, humming that tune once more, she leaned in closer, or rather the hallucinatory version of her did, bringing her close enough that Peter could almost swear he could feel her body heat prickling against his face and chest.

Close enough that her scent was intoxicatingly close.

More so as she pressed her hands to his chest and he realized that she was fumbling for buttons on a shirt that he wasn't actually wearing.

His heart began to hammer in his chest.

"Wha- what a-are you doing?!" Peter asked, backing away from her.

Uh oh. A crazy girl being all cute, Cletus quipped. Our one weakness.

Who seemed to be trying to take off his self-image's clothes.

"I want to get closer to you." She said, pressing nearer once more and undoing a shirt that wasn't really there, but nevertheless, he could feel soft, warm hands gliding up along his chest. Her scent was dizzying. Intoxicating. Whatever resistance he might normally have had, no matter how much stronger it had gotten, didn't seem to truly completely immunize him.

Or its all in the hormones. Cletus murmured.

Her face was seemingly inches from his. Her grin was wicked. Predatory. "I guess you were right after all, Peter."

He continued to back away, trying to fend off her wandering, caressing hands. "Right about what?" He squeaked.

The backs of his legs bumped up against her bed and he half-stumbled back, reaching a hand behind him to keep himself from falling into it.

His fingers brushed against the bare arm of her real body and it felt like an electric shock of pleasure exploding up his body. He forced himself to see past the cozy little bedroom for a moment and found that his arm was exploding into flailing, blurring tendrils, no longer under his control.

Cain whimpered then and Peter entirely lost control of his body. Warm, unreal hands slid from his chest to his unresponsive arm, her fingers intertwining with his as she leaned over him and smiled.

"About ending up in my bed after all." She licked her lips.

"Wha-what are you doing?" He said, his voice thick, his tongue barely felt under his control. His entire body felt slow and unresponsive.

"What does it feel like I'm doing?" She cooed, "I want us to be friends. Close, intimate friends. Then you can join us. We can play out in the sun. Doesn't that sound lovely?"

"Lovely." He croaked uncertainly, his voice no longer entirely his own.

-- You'll love me at once--

Cain's voice had transformed into a tortured groan. She's doing something to us

I'll say, Cletus leered back.

-- the way you did once--

Cain seemed to focus momentarily and snarled, No, you idiot. She's worming into our mind it' s like what we've been doing for years. She's--

You like this, don't you, Peter? He could hear her murmuring directly into his head.

Peeling away our resistance, Peter thought desperately.

-- Once upon a dream--

When we're done, you can come with us on our outing, right? Her voice was close and soft and delightedly open. Excited to be at play. Excited to play with him.

He lolled his head, trying to look away from her predatory gaze and barely managed to jiggle his head enough to realize that the arm which had brushed against Jessica's body had splayed itself into a tangle of tendrils that was wrapped around her forearm.

Why aren't we killing her yet? Connors suddenly and unexpectedly asked. He didn't seem affected at all by what was happening.

Cause we're bein' seduced and kind of enjoying it? Cletus muttered back.

Peter had slumped back onto the bed that was actually the Rhino's back. The sensations tracing through his body were intense and impossible. The indulgent, uncontrolled pleasure surging up his arm, snaking its way slowly across his chest made thought all but impossible. She was claiming him. He knew. Taking him. Inch by inch.

This was exactly what Hank had feared would have happened to him.

Hack your arm off. Connors suggested coldly.

I can't move anything! Peter managed to half-scream within his mind. I thought we were immune to her!

Not when we're this close it looks like, Cletus murmured in a daze. Cute, crazy girls really are our weakness. Who knew?

The younger Jessica-- the dream Jessica-- was no longer pushing him onto the bed. She had him pinned against it, straddling him. She had leaned in and was tracing whispering kisses along his arm, his chest, up his neck.

She's not real! She shouldn't be able to hold us down! Peter thought furiously, trying desperately to force her off of him. To move. But she seemed an impossible weight, pleasurably pressed against his body. The arm that had tangled with her body was little more than a source for a creeping pleasure had spread half-way across his chest and down to his hips now.

Cain's only response was another whimper. Peter realized that with his role of controlling their enhanced senses... he was the one bearing the brunt of the assault and had been from the very beginning.

Ignore her. Connors said sharply, his voice still with the echoed baritone.

Have you noticed what she's doing?! He thought back furiously, unable to do more than groan aloud with his real voice.

You can ignore her, Connors pressed.

I'm kind of enjoyin' this, Cletus murmured back, I mean we can have a little fun before we kill her, right? Where's the harm?

If she finishes what she's doing, we won't be able to kill her. She'll have us, Donna's voice seemed distant and furious. Stop fooling around and fight back.

Peter whimpered and wondered how exactly he was supposed to do that when his thoughts finally cleared enough to remember exactly what his other selves were driving at.

Ignore her.

But not just that.

Make her ignore me.

Peter knew that Cain would normally have been the one to handle it, but he was too far gone in whatever it was the Jessica was doing to them.

He inhaled sharply then then consciously began to filter her scent out.

The feel of unreal, hot skin pressing against him eased and the weight pinning him down seemed to be less as well.

"Peter?" Jessica's voice seemed to waver now. Uncertain. It was coming from behind him.

Her real voice.

From her real body behind him.

He couldn't hear her in his mind anymore.

The incessant humming had stopped.

He opened his eyes and saw the hallucinatory Jessica becoming less solid. Less real. The contact between them seemed to be fading away as well. He could feel his arm once more and the wave of pleasure that seemed poised to spread through his body stopped and reversed itself, leaving an agonizing sensation of pins and needles in its wake.

Unable to do much else, he forced his thoughts to quiet and focused all his awareness of his breathing. Consciously tuning into it. Ignoring Jessica's delicious, scent that he was all but swimming in. Made himself conscious of every scent that he could find... including that bitter ozone tang of the Oscorp strain.

He closed his eyes again, focused on that, let that scent suffuse his senses, even as he fought down the urge to gag.

"What are you doing Peter?! Why are you going again?!" She cried out, phantom hands reaching for him but he could feel them as little more than brushing against him. The real body was squirming in agitation even as Peter's numb arm finally tore free from hers.

"I thought we were going to be friends!" She sobbed, her voice a soft whimper from the bed.

He stumbled onto the floor, scrambling to move away from her. Her scent was no longer in his mind, worming its way through his resistance. Her scent seemed to be little more than a faded wisp in the air... but the other scents had now suffused his senses.

He rolled over onto all fours, breathing deeply and desperately, forcing his heartbeat to slow down.

Can we just finish this already? Donna asked sharply, drawing his attention back to Jessica's body which seemed to be on the verge of waking up.

What about the mobile hives? He thought back.

Eat her after we kill her and grab control of 'em and make 'em kill each other, Cletus replied offhandedly, but he seemed just as flustered as Peter did, Or grab control of what's left of Pym's corpse and do that same trick with the razor things coming out of everywhere. Shoot, if y'all really want, you can let me out to play again and I'll sort them all out right quick.

It doesn't seem like you can reason with her, Connors said dryly, She'll take you if you try again.

Cletus chuckled, Funny how you're having a whole lot more trouble dealing with one lil slip of a girl than you did with an entire neighborhood's worth of infected, huh?

He got back to his feet, his heartbeat finally calmed. His breathing down to normal.

He stared down at Jessica Drew, some part of him that had been Hank Pym looking at the sleeping woman for signs of the little girl she'd once been. She still squirmed and writhed slowly on the bed.

The part of him that was still mostly a sixteen year old boy, was far too intrigued by those movements for his own good.

Y'know if we really need to kill her, we could just tell your crazy girl the Jessie came on to you. She'll kill her for us, no problem. Cletus quipped.

Yes, but then MJ will probably kill us as well, Donna pointed out.

Peter growled at his personal peanut gallery. Jessica's sleep was troubled now. Peter realized that if she kept that up, she would probably wake up. He wondered if that would do anything to the preparations on the tracks if she did wake up.

Let's not find out, Donna replied to the thought.

Peter nodded. He took a deep breath and his arm blurred to its blade arm configuration.

Isn't touching her going to let her grab control all over again? Cletus pointed out.

Not if we cut her head off fast enough, Connors thought back, voice cold.

Peter sniffed at the air, suddenly distracted. Cain didn't seem to be up to filtering through their sensory input at the moment and reporting only what he absolutely needed to know. It was easy to forget just how much richer his senses had become since the changes. The continuous whispering and chattering in the back of his head from radio noise. The whispering of half-heard unintelligible voices that he was sure had nothing to do with radio.

Peter, Donna prodded, You need to focus.

"Wait. something smells... familiar." Peter murmured, shaking his head to clear it.

We've been here before, Connors replied, Of course, it smells familiar.

He'd focused on the Oscorp tainted scents to exclude Jessica's scent. Unlike Jessica's which had swamped the room, the Oscorp scent merely dotted the room. The shiny, pink skin on the viral matting exuded it. There were other small sources of that scent in the chamber, but mostly centered on Jessica.

He frowned down at Jessica and looked closer. Her creamy white skin wasn't quite so unmarred. He could see small patches of a brighter pink crawling up the back and sides of her neck. It almost seemed as though the patches were connected with thin threads to more patches on the back of the Rhino.

Almost like they were holding her down.

That's... is that why she's sleeping? Peter wondered. What does that mean?

He looked around, scanning the room as the scents shifted, there was a stronger concentration just through the broken wall.

A scent that was approaching.

We're running out of time. Donna murmured.

Jessica stirred even more, her fingers spreading and gripping onto the rhino's hide, sinking into the hard gray flesh.

Amidst the whispers he could half-hear, there were actual sounds now. Actual footsteps and words faintly heard of someone muttering as they walked closer.

"-- ss-shuh-shouln't have-- nuh-need-- more. Not much longer nuh-now--"

A man in a white lab coat stepped into view through the break in the wall. In one quivering hand, he held a capped syringe filled with a bright, red liquid.

He and Peter caught sight of one another almost simultaneously.

"Wuh-wha-what a-a-are y-yuh-you d-d-oing here?" The man stuttered in surprise.

A familiar stutter.

A familiar man.

Other memories from the Soldyat he had consumed earlier played against the backs of his eyes.

Wordless, incoherent rage boiled up his spine. Brian Watson's mindless, wordless roar of fury clawed its way up, but not driven by his thoughts.

Other thoughts and memories powered the sudden surge of rage.

Peter crossed the room in a single bounding leap, catching hold of the man's throat in his untransformed hand and slamming him hard enough to shatter the concrete into the wall behind him.

He raised his blade arm to press its razor sharp tip just beneath the man's eye. Just enough to cause a small pinprick of blood to well up.

Familiar scent. Old and musty, but mingled with tainted ozone.

The words were out of Peter's mouth before he'd even consciously realized he'd spoken. "I thought you were dead, Dr. Warren." Peter's voice had dropped into a cold, smooth baritone. A familiar one.

The man twitched and smiled nervously. A terrified giggle escaping him. "D-duh-doctor Pym. I thought y-y-you were dead, too. I like the new look."

Peter decided against correcting the man. In fact he wasn't entirely certain it was an inaccurate assessment, feeling himself driven by an unfamiliar anger and betrayal. No... it made sense, he supposed. Miles Warren should have died when he did. If the security team sent to take him down hadn't done the job, then the collapse of the building should have.

His presence, did give a clue as to why Gentek Tower's collapse hadn't been as total as it should have been.

The Soldyat had shown him that Warren had already been doing work for Oscorp without his-- Hank's-- knowledge.

And now this.

He was here. Alive. Reeking of Oscorp's modified Hydra.

Peter allowed the simulated Oscorp security helmet to blur away to reveal Hank Pym's face. He was delving into the man's secrets and memories... perhaps it was best to use his face.

Warren's eyes seemed to glaze over and Peter knew his own scent had shifted slightly. Something to make the man who had once been tied to Hank more... pliant. More amenable to his will. Not quite control, but certainly enough to make him less guarded. More open. More talkative.

"It looks like you might have made a deal to keep breathing." Peter asked, his voice still Pym's own.

"You t-tried to k-kuh-kill me!" Warren tittered in nervous agitation. "M-muh-most termination cl-clauses aren't so literal."

"You'd already made a deal with your new masters well before then," Peter continued, puzzling it out as he spoke.

"You were stifling us. Limiting us. Y-yuh-you and the old men in the mountain were all about containment. Limits." He giggled once more, holding up the syringe. It smelled of blood and the acrid, tainted scent of the Oscorp Hydra. "We're making such advances now. So many. More very soon. Very, very soon." There was a light of fanaticism and a spark of madness in the man's eyes.

"You want an outbreak?" Peter said slowly, almost unable to believe.

"Nuh-not m-me personally, no." Warren replied with a ghoulish grin.

"Jameson." Peter said, not quite a question, just confirming a realization.

Warren continued, "Y-yuh-yes. Colonel Jameson luh-left y-you out of the loop on a lot of what w-we got from the Russians. Such things th-they achieved. Y-yuh-you had too many moral objections left in you. No scientific curiousity. None at all."

"Scientific curiosity?" Peter stared at the man incredulously. "What kind of scientific curiosity is going to be satisfied by unleashing that?!" He waved his blade arm taking in both Jessica and the train lines beyond.

"The Russians had the right idea," Warren replied and grinned ghoulishly, "They simply suffered from a failure. Failure of bureaucracy."

Peter had to gape at what the man was driving at. "You're trying to turn Manhattan Island into another Vozrozhdeniya Island." The Russian viral containment center for Weapon Plus. A weapons development laboratory where they weaponized Hydra by breeding specific mutations. The one that was emptied out when they turned everything over to the Thunderbolts.

Warren's eyes shone, "J-jameson h-huh-has men poised to collapse the tunnels and blow all the bridges to isolate Manhattan. Keep the outbreak isolated here. A self-contained laboratory environment to give the virus room to grow. To breed."

"That's insane." Peter whispered, his voice his own now, no longer Pym's baritone. "And it's not isolated! Queens is infected--"

"Which was never part of the plan." Warren cut in sharply. "B-but it has been useful t-t-to keep the Thunderbolt's attention off of us."

"You..." Peter stared as other thoughts rose up. A memory that could have been Hank's or it could have been Connors. His fingers tightened on Warren't throat and the wordless rage roared through his mind. "You woke Jessica up the first time around. You're why she woke up in the first place!"

Kill him, Cletus whispered. He's why your ma and pa are gone. Kill him.

The smaller man choked, his eyes glazing over, but seemed unable or unwilling to stop talking. "I-- I delivered t-the s-s-shot meant to wake her. I never r-really wuh-worked for you, Dr. Pym. It was simply... co-convenient."

"But then you waited before--"

"W-w-we had it all ready th-then... but Mary Parker d-did something. Altered Jessica Drew's Hydra infection. Made the Guardian strain we were using to immunize our people from her no longer work afterwards. It took us five years. Five more years til we were ready to try again. Th-this time we didn't even really need her awake. We could just pull her viral byproducts and manipulate her connection to the rest of her infectees through subliminal controls while she stayed quiescent. We were ready to proceed--"

"But then she woke up on her own." Peter realized. Or rather, perhaps his mom had known something was coming and had allowed Jessica to wake up to prevent it. Or it had simply been coincidence.

"And Forest Hills happened," Warren replied, seemingly pleased. "There was some interesting d-data there. Yes. Interesting, but too uncontrolled. With Manhattan, we can get a much larger population breeding within set limits. The arrangements were made. You weren't really pulling your own weight anymore... well, it was a lot of weight, I a-a-admit... so it was arranged for you to be fed to her."

"Sick." Peter whispered, his stomach clenching. Pym was ruthless, but it was in a way that Peter understood. His ruthlessness served a purpose. It was to save more lives.

These people made Hank seem like a saint by comparison.

Warren shrugged and held the syringe up once more, "N-nuh-now, I-I-I've answered y-your questions, Dr. Pym, but I really must insist you let me give our Madam Hydra her booster sh-shot."

"Why?" Peter growled, fighting down the urge to just crush the man's neck and wondering why he bothered. He could get everything Miles Warren knew by consuming him if he wished. There really wasn't any point in keeping him alive.

Warren replied, "B-buh-because she was getting agitated. I-i-if she doesn't get this, she's going to finish fighting off her last booster shot sooner than scheduled and--"

Behind them, Jessica screamed suddenly.

Peter turned and saw her surging to a sitting position on her bed. The scream resounded both in the real world and in his head. The pinkish patches on her skin seemed to boil and blister then flake off.

"-- wake up." Warren finished weakly.

Then from the train platforms the bellowing roars of suddenly alert Rhinos began to echo.

Jessica's eyes were opened and flaring a brilliant red.

A delighted smile blossomed on her face as her eyes focused on Peter.

"Oh. There you are."

- - -